Wednesday 27 August 2014

Inspirations 8

 Yesterday was a clear-up day, not in terms of house, but computer. The book manuscript was finally loaded onto three CDs ready to go which left me the task of tidying up all the associated debris. Would I do it again? Probably not, but then no one has asked me so that's a bit of a redundant question. So as part of the clear up I took a few photos of the layout and wrote a very short piece for 009 News, possibly a bit near the knuckle, but very much in the style of the old 1960/70s articles with more about storyline than the construction. Not like the increasingly boring shopping list articles that seem so prevalent today. Which brings me to this...
The Far Twittering. Built by Mike Cook and subsequently passed around, the Emmett influenced layout has become an underground classic. This style of modelling is extremely hard to pull off (I know of only one other that's managed it) and very much of it's time. the problem with Emmett's stuff is that it was by and large in 2D sketches and while it's easy (!) to think out of the box in 2D, making that actually work is another thing. Even the artist himself must have struggled, but pull it off he did. Search for Festival of Britain to find more images like the one below. This 'drunken, but logical' is harder than it looks.
Now with things cleared a bit, maybe the enthusiasm will return.

9 comments:

  1. I’m curious to know what magazine and issue the photo of Mike Cook’s The Far Twittering came from? The Roland Emett connection is interesting. The American model railroader E. L. Moore published photos in the January 1956 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman and the December 1959 issue of Model Trains of dioramas he built that were also inspired by Emett’s work. It seems Emett had staunch fans on both sides of the Atlantic.

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  2. I think an article by Eric Fox appeared in the Jan 1967 Model Railway News which definitely pre-dates Mike's model, which I think appeared in the seventies (?) . Warley MRC have a model of Far Twittering which is on their web site. There was also an article in the Oct 1999 and July 2000 Railway Modeller about it by Peter Bulter. The issues with Mike Cook's model escape my memory now, perhaps Chris will know :-)

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    1. Thanks. I'll have to see if I can dig them up.

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  3. If you want 3D Emett, get yourself to Birmingham ASAP before the largest exhibition of his work closes. http://philsworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/rowland-emett-exhibition.html

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    1. Interesting link. I think the Ontario Science Centre has a Christmas display of Emett stuff each year. YouTube had this video from 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrCJZAKhyI8

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  4. December 1970
    CF

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    1. JD, by a wierd co-incidence, I just picked up a copy today. If you want a pdf of the article just email me :-)

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